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The chorus to save Oakwell – Stoneleigh’s Villanova “sister” – from school district buzzsaws is practically deafening.
And we’re not just talking about cars honking for picketers outside Lower Merion School District’s Ardmore offices each Friday.
On Sept. 7, three days after her sons started the new school year at Radnor Elementary, Heidi Diskin ended her life.
She was 44.
We share this with you because Heidi would want us to.
“One hundred percent, she would want her story told,” said her husband, J.D., in a phone interview. “My hope is that what happened to Heidi can be a teachable moment. As terrible as this situation is, it’s an even worse tragedy if it doesn’t help others.”
To family and close friends, Heidi’s suicide was a sucker punch – a heart-wrenching coda to 20 years of pain.
To those less close, it seemed, well, inexplicable.
Because Heidi had made mental health advocacy and suicide prevention her life’s work. She’d started a brain health foundation, she’d spoken to countless groups, she’d even hosted a cable TV show about mental health. How could Heidi Diskin – of all people – have succumbed herself?
Summer’s over and kids are back in school – reading, writing, and, increasingly, juuling.
Some are vaping right under our noses – on school buses, in cafeterias, bathrooms and bedrooms – using slick little Juul devices that look like harmless flash drives but are anything but.
Indeed, juuling is turning unsuspecting Main Line teens into nicotine addicts – one surreptitious, sweet-flavored puff at a time.
Seems even the “smart” kids are doing it.
Holy Lazarus! A long-stagnant stretch of Tredyffrin has a pulse.
The owner of Swedesford Plaza wants to bulldoze the old HH Gregg and build luxury apartments in its place – 250 of them.
After approaching umpteen stores, fitness chains, health systems and grocers for its two empty anchors, Echo Realty is throwing in the retail towel on one of them. In partnership with Bozzuto, Echo plans to build a four-story, 250-unit apartment building at the old HH Gregg site, a permitted use under zoning code.
Great balls of fire! Wayne’s about to get what Ardmore’s had for years: its own live music hall.
118 North will open on N. Wayne Avenue Feb. 15, adding a touch of Austin/Nashville to our fair town.
To which we say: Rock it to us.
Well, whaddayaknow? Marbles is rolling back to Bryn Mawr.
Fifteen years after the Main Line mainstay near the movie theater went dark, it’s being resurrected – same spot, same owners, same tin ceiling.
The building’s been owned all along by local restaurateurs, George, Michel, Joseph Wakim and their sister, Fadia Wakim Abi-Khattar, who also own Aldar Bistro and Murray’s in Bala and Evviva in Narberth.
Guilty as charged. A former teacher’s aide has admitted to the repeated sexual assault of a Conestoga sophomore – in his school office, his car and her bedroom – during the 2016-2017 school year.
After pleading not guilty at his April arraignment, Arthur Phillips changed his plea to guilty last Tuesday and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in state prison.
If Phillips had been younger, Chester County Judge Patrick Carmody said he wouldn’t have accepted the plea deal. “You’re 67, Do you understand that you may never leave jail, that this might be a life sentence?” he asked the defendant.
Phillips said quietly that he understood.
The judge was clearly disgusted by Phillips’ crimes.
The dirt is flying and the bulldozers are busy at the old Waterloo Gardens, now a bustling construction site for Devon Yard.
Good thing, too.
Because URBN is already booking weddings and mitzvahs – from Sept. 1, 2018 onward – at the Yard’s splashy event venue, Terrain Gardens.
Never mind that the project took more than four years to get OK’d; URBN’s confident it can have the whole shebang up and running in less than 12 months.
The Tredyffrin/Easttown School District is absorbing yet another fusillade – this one, an utterly explosive federal lawsuit that, in effect, blames Conestoga, its culture and staff for the months-long sexual abuse of a 15-year-old female student by 67-year-old TV studio aide Arthur Phillips.
Revolting.
To bolster its case, the suit details T/E’s “recent history of sex-related scandals”:
The suit says the three scandals show a “pattern of deliberate and reckless indifference to signs of ongoing sexual harassment and sexual abuse” in the district.
Devon is fired up over DanDan.
It hasn’t officially opened but the new restaurant – at the old Ella’s near the Devon Acme – is already packin’ ’em in.
Just like it does in Center City.
And for good reason.
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